Allawi lifts ban on al-Sadr's paper

[kentuck]

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/47C525CE-ECA1-49B6-BEC7-0C5E05D90F2B.htm

<snip>

Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi has lifted a ban imposed by the former US-led occupation on a controversial newspaper belonging to Muqtada al-Sadr.

"The Hawza newspaper was allowed to be published again pursuant to an order by the US appointed Prime Minister, who has expressed his absolute belief in free press," according to an official statement.

The closure of the weekly paper by former US administrator Paul Bremer at the end of March and the arrest of one of al-Sadr's key aides were among the catalysts for an uprising by the Shia leader and his Mahdi Army against the occupation forces in central and southern Iraq that lasted nearly two months.

There was no immediate comment on Allawi's decision from al-Sadr's office in Sadr City, Baghdad, or the southern city of Najaf.

...more

[Rose Siding]

1. Sadr has been courting Allawi

His group put out a pamphlet that list people who it is acceptable to murder:

"It is allowed to kill: 1. hijackers 2. kidnappers 3. thieves who are trying to disrupt safe family life 4. collaborators, spies and terrorists from Al Qaeda, Wahhabis and Saddamists," the proclamation reads. It goes on to list prostitutes, pimps, pornography sellers, gamblers - and those who sell alcohol."

The NYT concluded:

"What makes the declaration notable is that it seems to combine several elements of Mr. Sadr's power and political stance: it threatens physical force not only on behalf of issues popular among many devout Shiites, but also, in what may be a gesture to the new interim government, against some of the same enemies of the American and Iraqi forces: kidnappers, hard-core Hussein loyalists and members of Al Qaeda.

"That was the intention," said Sayeed Rahim al-Alaq, deputy head of the committee that drafted the list of offenses. "We are with the government. We are antiterrorists."

Officials of the new Iraqi govt made noises about not approving of the list, saying that "no one is above the law".

But that was just before reports that Allawi himself had shot 6 prisoners so who knows how that statement would be amended.;-)

link to the article quoted-

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/16/international/middleeast/16sadr.html

[daleo]

2. Allawi decided Sadr would make a better friend than enemy

And vice versa. I can't see it lasting. The U.S. won't like it - or is Sadr ok now that the one-legged man is the new devil?

[Moderator]

3. kick

:dem: